EPA’s New National Oil and Gas Standards are an Important Step Toward Cleaner, Healthier Air

(Washington, DC – April 18, 2012) Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
finalized important, new national clean air standards for oil and natural gas that
will reduce harmful air pollution, protect public health and the
environment, and prevent the waste of a valuable domestic energy source. Leaks, venting and flaring from oil and
natural gas drilling activities contribute to ground-level ozone
("smog"), toxic air pollution such as benzene and destabilize the climate.
The limited federal standards that existed prior to these clean air measures
covered only natural gas processing plants, and were most recently updated, in
part, 13 years ago; other aspects of the air standards for the oil and gas
industry are more than a quarter-century old.

“These
standards are a trifecta: they protect human health and the environment, reduce
waste of a domestic energy source growing in importance and save industry money
through sales of recovered natural gas product. For too long the industry has operated under
insufficient, outdated standards that fail to protect Americans from the
dangerous air pollution produced by oil and gas activities,” said Fred Krupp, the president of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

EPA’s new air
quality measures – New Source
Performance Standards (NSPS) and National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air
Pollutants (NESHAPS) – are an important step in limiting harmful emissions of airborne
contaminants discharged during natural gas extraction activities. EPA estimates that these measures will reduce
air pollution from oil and natural gas sources, with significant reductions in
smog-forming pollutants and hazardous air pollutants like benzene, a known
carcinogen. As a co-benefit, the
standards will also reduce methane, a potent climate forcer.

In
his 2011
State of the
Union Address, President Obama committed to developing shale gas resources
“without putting the health and safety of our citizens at risk.” Likewise, the Secretary of Energy Advisory
Board’s (SEAB) Shale Gas Subcommittee has recommended “[m]easures should be
taken to reduce emissions of air pollutants, ozone precursors, and methane as
quickly as practicable. The Subcommittee supports adoption of rigorous
standards for new and existing sources of methane, air toxics, ozone precursors
and other air pollutants from shale gas operations.” EPA’s proposed clean air measures are an important first step in
fulfilling the President’s commitment and SEAB’s recommendation.

The standards
achieve these important air quality improvements by utilizing proven,
cost-effective control technologies that are similar to clean air measures that
the states of Colorado and Wyoming have successfully deployed. In these states, EDF analysis demonstrates
that the oil and gas industry has experienced swift growth while deploying
similar, cost-effective pollution control technologies.

One such
technology, “green completion,” allows producers to capture emissions that
would otherwise occur after a well is hydraulically fractured, and to capture
and profit from the sale of gas that would otherwise be lost. EPA estimates that deploying green completion
technologies, along with other measures in the rule that would plug leaks
throughout the system, will save billions of cubic feet of domestic natural gas
each year. EPA estimates that
application of these proven, cost-effective technologies will yield a cost
savings of $11 to $19 million in 2015, because the value of natural gas and
condensate that will be recovered and sold will offset costs.

“These
updated standards will reduce harmful air pollution through highly
cost-effective controls and avoid the needless waste of a valuable domestic
energy source: natural gas,” said EDF senior scientist Ramon
Alvarez. “They will
also standardize many common sense practices and technologies that
natural gas companies already use successfully and benefit from financially.”

Plugging
leaks of greenhouse gases, such as methane, is important because they
undermine the climate benefits of natural gas over other fossil fuels such as
coal and oil. Methane is the main
ingredient in natural gas and a greenhouse gas (GHG) pollutant many times more
potent than carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal contributor to man-made climate
change. A recent EDF paper published in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) concludes
that new natural gas combined cycle power plants reduce climate impacts
compared to new coal plants as long as methane leakage remains under 3.2%.

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solutions to the most serious environmental problems. EDF links science,
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